The La Liga app, the official streaming app for Spain’s most popular football league, has been used to access the microphone and GPS of Android users.
According to the Spanish football league, the app downloaded more than 10 million times on the Google Play Stores has been used to determine authorized broadcast venues by matching audio data and phone location.
This is due to an effort by La Liga to protect clubs and their fans from fraud, the organization defended itself in a statement on its website, stating it requested for consent during installation or update.
The organization claimed that broadcasting of football matches in public places without a paid license cost the game an estimated 150 million euros ($177m) a year.
La Liga also claimed that user privacy is not at risk because the app turns audio recordings into code, which it matches with audio data from a game, and doesn’t record or save any data locally.